• Bloomberg cited a government official as saying that the European Union’s (EU) new rulings to curb food and wood products that are linked to deforestation will have limited impact on Malaysian shipments of palm oil and timber products. Plantation Industries and Commodities Minister Datuk Zuraida Kamaruddin said that although the new ruling will most likely affect exports to the EU, it will only apply to new planted areas. She added that Malaysia is focusing on “increasing productivity of the existing planted areas rather than expansion”.

• Bloomberg also quoted the director general of Indonesia’s Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry as saying that Indonesia plans to carry out road tests on B40 in 2022F. The government will ensure that B40 is suitable for the mandatory fuel mix. The Indonesia government is still calculating the biodiesel consumption for 2022F. Indonesia has consumed 7.66mil KL (6.7mil tonnes) of biodiesel as of November 2021.

• Reuters reported that shortages of drugs and feed ingredients are affecting US livestock producers. Supply chain disruptions are hitting America’s meat producers and sending them scrambling for alternatives as they seek to care for farm animals and keep costs down. Shortages of some medications such as penicillin reflect in part a competition for raw materials between people and animals as the Covid-19 pandemic shifts demand and disrupts global trade through shipping logjams and port bottlenecks. In farm states such as Iowa and Minnesota, farmers said that they are struggling to find lysine, a cheaper feed alternative to soybean meal.

• S&P Global Platts said that Brazilian FOB Paranagua soybean meal basis levels for nearby loadings have dropped to a discount to CBOT futures for the first time in five months amid rising international prices, thin export demand and positive prospects for the country’s soybean harvest. Sources said that the FOB Paranagua soybean meal basis has been dropping since mid-October due to a lack of physical demand with most of the trades related to hedging purpose. S&P Global Platts assessed the FOB Paranagua port differential for January shipment to be minus US$3.00/short tonne to the CBOT January contract on 17 November.

• According to Euractiv, the European Commission has until February 2022 to comply with the EU Ombudsman’s recommendation to provide data related to the origins of imported used cooking oil (UCO) biofuel in the EU amid concerns over alleged fraud cases. UCO are doublecounted biofuels under the EU’s renewable energy directive as they can help decarbonise Europe’s transport sector. But the current directive does not differentiate between domestically collected cooking oil and those imported from third world countries. NGO Transport and Environment published a report in July 2020, which found that more than half of the UCO used in Europe for biodiesel in 2019 was imported (1.5mil out of 2.8mil tonnes). The most significant share came from China (34%) and about 20% came from Malaysia and Indonesia.

Source: AmInvest Research - 29 Nov 2021